Salvation and Saving Grace
by Sweet Little Mary Sue
Summary: Rachel Porter refused to give up, she refused to stop fighting, not for herself, and especially not for her daughters, Kylie and Katie, but they were alone in the new world, and each day brought new dangers along with it, until they were surrounded on all sides. Low on supplies and running from a horde, they find themselves surrounded, with their backs against a wall...Rick/OC.
1. Chapter One

Salvation and Saving Grace

Sweet Little Mary Sue

Synopsis: Rachel Porter refused to give up, she refused to stop fighting, not for herself, and especially not for her daughters, Kylie and Katie, but they were alone in the new world, and each day brought new dangers along with it, until they were surrounded on all sides. Low on supplies and running from a horde, they find themselves surrounded, with their backs against a wall, when suddenly help arrives in the form of a very welcome and familiar face.

Disclaimer: I cannot claim ownership of any part of _The Walking Dead _universe. I'm simply borrowing a few characters, and some of the plot points as well, to aid me in telling this story. That being said, Rachel, Katie and Kylie Porter are mine, along with any and all that they bring along with them from the depths of my imagination.

*This work of fan fiction is rated **M** for violence and gore, tense and disturbing content, mild to moderate cursing and eventual citrusy smut, both limes and lemons.*

Chapter One

Rachel's POV

I'd heard my Daddy talk about situations that were snafus, I'd heard about fubar, I'd even heard about a fustercluck, when he knew that I was listening, which turned into a clusterfuck when he _didn't_ know that I was, but I'd never really known what it meant to live through those sorts of circumstances myself, not until everything in the world went straight to hell. Now it seemed like each and every day was a snafu, wrapped in fubar, and drowning in a sea of clusterfucks, and there wasn't a single soul around to throw me and my girls a life preserver. Oh, there were plenty of dead shufflers scuttling about, stinking and moaning, and trying to gnaw on our flesh, but not one friendly, human face lately, no matter where I looked, and I was starting to get a little despondent, to say the very least.

Bad things were supposed to happen at night, when you couldn't get a good glimpse of your surroundings, but that, like every other damn thing, had changed when the world went tit's up. Now things were dangerous in the daytime as well, when the sun was shining brightly overhead, though it did help, for the most part, to have the light, because then we could catch a glimpse of the dead ones before they converged on us…unless the stinking sons of bitches were hiding, which they tended to do more often than not, although I wouldn't have thought that they would have the necessary brain activity to do so.

The store that we were looting was a mom and pop type of establishment, a homey little place, well, I was willing to bet that it had been that way at one time, and it had just about been picked clean already, but I knew that we had to have a look anyway. Our cache of supplies was growing a little lean, truth be told, everything was almost gone, and it was harder with each day that passed to find a fluffy little critter of some sort who was willing to run out into our path and sacrifice itself for our next meal, hence our increased need to canvass for supplies that had been left behind or overlooked by other survivors.

"I found some girly stuff, Mama," Katie called to me, holding up a box of tampons, "And here are some more of those daddy and mama balloons too."

The Tampax would definitely come in handy, because my body still kept things going the way that they had since I was eleven, but what in the hell was I going to do with a box of Trojans? If memory served, it had been three years since I'd had sex, closer to four, if the truth were to be told, and from the look of things, it seemed highly unlikely that my luck would change anytime soon. I had every reason to leave the contraceptives right where they were, for the next person to find, someone who might have actually needed a rubber or two, but for some reason I stuffed them into my bag, right beside the tampons, and continued down the scavenged shelves, looking for anything that we might be able to use.

"There are some beanie weenies over here, Mama," Kylie said, in a dejected way, a tone that one used when they had nothing appetizing to look forward to when suppertime rolled around. "And a couple cans of potted meat too."

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad, does it?" I asked, striving for a bright and cheery tone, even though the prospect of either of those meals, after all of the times that we'd had them before, did little to lift my spirits. "It's better than liver and onions with a side of Brussels sprouts, isn't it?"

I heard her shudder, and then she murmured something that might have been assent, but apparently she wasn't ready to leave the argument behind. "The beanie weenies won't be too bad, I suppose, but Daddy told me that potted meat is nothing but ground up eyeballs and peckers and I don't want to eat any of that, Mama, I don't care how hungry I get….."

"Kylie Rose Porter! That is enough of that kind of talk!" I admonished her, as quietly as possible, lest I draw the attention of any of the undesirables that might have been lurking in the vicinity, both those who were dead, as well as those who were still alive. "Your Daddy, rest his soul, ought to have known better to say things like that to you, and _you_ should know better than to repeat them to me, shouldn't you?"

She looked dejected and stared at the floor, but only after she'd glared at her sister, even though Katie hadn't made a peep of noise. "Yes, ma'am," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Mama, I won't say nothing like that again."

I suppose that I ought to have corrected her grammar, but I hated to gripe at her about every little thing, with all the crap that she, and her sister, already had to endure. Why should I be worried about something that was so stupid in this new world that we were living in anyway? I needed to concentrate on teaching them the tasks and principles that would help them to survive, just in case anything was to happen to me, rather than concentrating on whether or not they were using proper grammar.

"Don't give it another thought, sweetheart," I told her, moving closer to her side, to give her a one-armed hug, and then I turned to where Katie was standing, still rifling through the meager contents that had been left behind by those who'd scavenged before us, and froze for just an instant, when I saw what was standing behind her.

I kept Kylie pulled tight behind me and rushed forward the few steps that it took to reach Katie and pushed her back, so that she was standing beside her sister. It was just the one dead-eyed, stinking bastard for the moment, lurching toward us while it moaned and hissed and clicked its teeth together, but who knows how many friends it had brought along for the party. I turned my head left and right, searching for an escape route as calmly as I could, but I had made a mistake when we entered the store, one that had allowed us to enter an aisle that only had one exit…yep, that's right, the only way out was through the zombified son of a bitch that was planning on making a midday snack out of us, and that sucked big hairy nuts, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

"Arm yourselves, girls," I told them, reaching toward the scabbard that hung off of my belt, the one that housed my Daddy's NCO sword, and drawing it out of its sheath. "This one is mine, but I need you to be prepared as we make our way out of here, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," Kylie whispered, and I heard her take her tire thumper out of her pack. Katie didn't acknowledge me verbally, but I felt her hand on my shoulder, patting me, and I knew that she was readying herself, and raising her blowgun to her lips. I suppose that it would be a shocking sight for some people, to see two little girls wielding dangerous weapons, or, that is, it would have in the old world, but I'd always been a firm believer in the notion that everyone needed to know how to defend themselves, and that conviction was even stronger, now that things had gone straight to hell.

I had the time to take a deep breath, to ready myself, and immediately wished that I'd charged ahead, brandishing my Daddy's sword like it was nothing at all to plunge steel through the eyeball of a creature who'd once been a human being, instead of taking that breath. My nostrils were thoroughly assaulted by the smell of rotting carcass after that mistake, which meant that this particular zombie hadn't been lurching about for very long, and my stomach roiled and rioted as the stink lingered, then grew worse, with each stumbling step that ol' Dead and Ugly took in our direction.

One of them was bad enough, it scared me and shook me to the core, but then I saw that the smelly son of a bitch had brought a few friends along, four of them, to be exact, and my heart, which had already been pounding away in my chest, seemed to sink down into my protesting stomach when I realized that we were outnumbered. Five to three wouldn't have qualified as the worst odds that one could get, when the world had been a different place, but now it may as well have been fifty instead of five, and my mind spun about, all scrambled in my head, as I did my damnedest to figure out what I ought to do.

"Mama," Katie whispered fearfully behind me, and I could hear the tears that were in her voice, I could _feel_ them, punching me in the gut. That one word was a plea for me to help her, it was proof that she, and her sister, expected me to make everything right, though they had a sinking suspicion that I wouldn't be able to. Dear God, they were only eight. They'd already endured so much, how could they possibly withstand any more than they had….?

_Get a grip on yourself, dammit_! I told myself, tightening my hold on my daddy's sword. _This isn't the end for any of you, so stop it with the gloom and doom._

"Don't be scared, girls, we're going to be just fine," I whispered, moving forward, centering my attention on the zombie that was leading the rest of the pack. "Stay behind me, and we'll work our way forward and we'll be out of here before you know it."

I managed to sound confident, even though I didn't feel that way, and the girls seemed to believe me, or, that is, they did an excellent job of _pretending_ to trust that what I'd said was true. I took another step, then another, and my movement seemed to inspire a little excitement in the stinking husk, at least, that was what I thought the rising growling and furiously clacking jaw meant. I readied my sword for a mortal lunge, right through the eye, into the brain, when suddenly, out of nowhere, four more zombies made their way onto the scene, and the sight of them made me stumble in my steps.

The girls grabbed at me, and tried to hold me upright, but they weren't strong enough to keep me on my feet, not even with their combined effort, and I crashed down onto the floor. I would have liked to have bounced back onto my feet in a flash, like they do in the movies, as if the jolt of a fall is nothing to them at all, but this was real-life, and as such, I lingered longer than I ought to, and that was all that it took for the zombie to, literally, get the drop on me.

I had thought that I'd been closer to the walking corpses than what I cared to be in the past, but in that moment I realized that I'd been mistaken. Now I had one of the stinking bastards lying on top of me, like it meant to take me in a manly fashion, if it had been capable of such a thing. The sickening odor was overwhelming, and I was so scared that it felt like I might die from the fear, it felt like my heart might burst, and the worst thing of all was the fact that I would die with the knowledge that the horde that was making its way toward my girls would inevitably rip them to pieces.

Katie and Kylie were crying and screaming, with all of their attention focused on me, rather than on the encroaching zombies, which was where it needed to be, and that was a sight that brought the fight in me roaring back to life. I struggled to hold back the smelly wreck on top of me, pushing it back with every ounce of strength that I possessed, when suddenly I heard a struggle breaking out in front of me, where I couldn't see, and I heard the swish and thud that I associated with rotting flesh being pierced and clove in two, paired with the sound of bodies hitting the ground.

My girls had gone quiet, and were watching the scene unfold with wide eyes, and it pleased me to know that their attention was turned elsewhere, so that they wouldn't see the moment that was hastily approaching when the zombie would get the best of me and sink its rotting teeth into my flesh. I wasn't giving in, I would fight until the end, but the monster on top of me was so strong and I could feel my body growing weaker and weaker…when suddenly the animated corpse was lifted off of me by the most unlikely of saviors, who quickly dispatched it with a knife through the eye.

I stared at my rescuer with unbelieving eyes, and wondered why I should be surprised that he'd saved me, when that was just what he'd done so many other times in my life…when he wasn't being a pain in my ass, that is. Time and life had taken its toll on him, and the burdens showed themselves on his face and in his eyes as well, but I would have known him anywhere.

"Rick Grimes," I said softly, in a voice that was roughened by all of the screams and sobs that I'd been holding inside. "You sure are a sight for sore eyes."

Rick's POV

The stores had been picked nearly clean of anything that would amount to a hill of beans for our people, but beggars had never been able to be choosers and that was especially true now that the world had been flushed down the collective toilet of existence. There'd been a time when I would have turned up my nose at the prospect of a warm supper of SpaghettiOs, but now I ate them cold and counted myself lucky to have been given the opportunity to do so.

I had taken to imagining different sorts of food that I loved, the kind that I hankered for, now that there was no hope of ever tasting them again. I dreamed of hamburgers and French fries, of rib-eye steak and baked potatoes, of warm peach cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. They were good daydreams, they set my mouth to watering something fierce, but they were cruel and heartless as well, once the reality of Spam and Vienna Sausages dawned on me all over again.

"There's a little general store on the corner," Daryl whispered beside me, bringing me out of my culinary fantasies with a start. "It looks like it's been torn t' hell, and chances are good that there ain't nothin' of use left t' be had, but we can give it a goin' over, if ya want us to."

I'd seen the place, and, given the way that it looked, I would have been surprised if there was anything left that was edible in nature. I also imagined that all of the medications and medical supplies had been wiped out, along with batteries and formula or blankets and clothing and anything and everything else that was worth a hoot 'n hell, but I had always been a fond believer in the principle of never leaving a single stone unturned, and the recent events in my life had only made me more of a stickler in that way of thinking.

"Let's go through a couple of those houses at the end of the street first, and we'll save it for last….."

A piercing scream rent the air, followed by another and another, until the shrieking became a constant sound, and I wondered who in hell would be so careless as to make so much noise. It sounded like a couple of kids, and that made sense, because children reacted instinctively to their fear, and would scream their little heads off if something scared them badly enough.

"It's coming from that store," I called over my shoulder, knowing that there was no reason for me to whisper, not now that all hell had broke loose. "What do ya say we go give it a look-see after all?"

I knew that there was no need to ask Daryl about running to the rescue of the caterwauling kids, because he'd already taken off and I had to scramble to keep up with him. Hershel stayed in the car, to keep an eye on the streets, without me asking him to, which I was grateful for, and Daryl led the way inside with his crossbow at the ready.

The racket was deafening inside, and it only took a glance of the situation to see that what we had was a plain and simple clusterfuck of a situation to deal with. A couple of walkers would have been enough to deal with, but we had nine of them, nine snarling, ugly sons of bitches who were advancing on the little girls who were howling for help. No scratch that, there were eight walkers moving toward the kids, while the other one rested on top of a woman that I assumed was the mother, or, at least, the guardian of the tiny lookalike duo.

It would have been understandable for either Daryl or me to freeze in our tracks, given the horror of the situation, but we were old hands at dispatching walkers, and we made short work of the horde. Truth be told, it was my crossbow wielding friend who took out most of them, though I did take two, before I turned my attention to the one who was trying to gnaw on the woman who was lying on the floor.

She'd put up one hell of a fight, but I could see that she was quickly running out of steam, and it grew almost eerily quiet in the store as Daryl finished the last of his walkers and I reached down to pull the rotting bastard off of the weakly struggling woman. I rammed my blade through its eye and into its brain and dropped it in a limp heap onto the floor, taking a deep breath as I surveyed my surroundings and gave myself a mental pat on the back.

"Rick Grimes," the woman on the floor said, in a wondering sort of tone, one that sounded like she was on the verge of tears, and, really, who in hell could blame her for wanting to cry? "You sure are a sight for sore eyes."

I took a closer look at her as I held out my hand to her. I saw her dark mass of curls, which she'd attempted to tame somewhat with a ponytail, and her equally dark eyes, filled with tears, when I remembered them as I'd known them, dancing, more often than not, with mirth, when they weren't filled with mischief. There was a hesitant smile curving those lips that had always seemed a tad too full, when I recalled an urchin's grin, most often in response to her getting me in trouble, and it was plain as day that the two little girls, who were torn between sniffling and staring at the dead walkers, were her little ones, and I wondered when that had happened.

"Hiya, squirt," I said, automatically addressing her by the nickname that I knew she hated, even though it had been at least fifteen years since we'd been in each other's company. "Long time, no see...looks like you still need me to get you out of trouble, though, doesn't it?"


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Rick's POV

Tornadoes were one of those things that went along with life in Georgia, kind of like drawling accents and muggy weather. They were something that you hoped that you'd never experience personally, but chances were fair that you would, if you chose to live out your life in The Peach State. I could remember one from my youth that had scared the hell out of me, though you would've had to rip out my toenails to get me to admit that when it happened. That hadn't been the first twister that I'd encountered in my ten years of life, but it had been the worst one, the most destructive one, and it had been the first time that there had been someone depending on me to take care of them.

My mom had been minding Rachel that night while her parents were out of town, and she'd been down in the dumps because it was the night after her fifth birthday and she'd had to spend it with my family instead of hers. I could understand why she'd been so sad, now that I was an adult, but back then I'd been a punk kid, one who took pleasure in teasing those who were younger and unlikely to knock me on my ass once they'd had enough, and, needless to say, I'd tormented her until she was bawling…and then the lights had gone off.

I don't know why in hell my mom had trusted me to look after Rachel, she had to have known what a bully I'd been back then, but for some reason she'd left the two of us at home while her and my dad had gone to the grocery store, and they were still gone when the rain had started to pour. It was an oddity of sorts, to have a thunderstorm at the beginning of December, and the pounding rain and crashing thunder, paired with one flash of lightning after another, had put Rachel on pins and needles, and that, along with her loneliness and my teasing, had finally got the best of her and she'd run to hide underneath my parents' bed, crying her eyes out, and I hadn't been able to budge her, not even when the house had gone as black as the ace of spades.

At first I'd been trying to coax her out because I'd known that my dad would tan my ass if he found out that I'd been picking on a little girl, but then, after everything went dark and I'd heard the roar of the twister as it moved closer and closer to our home, I'd known that I had to save her. It had taken a few apologies, and promises that I would never, ever tease her again, when what I'd wanted to do was cuss at her and threaten her with certain death from the tornado, but she'd finally crawled out of her hiding place and had automatically thrown her tiny arms around my neck, holding me tightly, while I carried her into the bathroom and took a seat in the tub.

She'd been a mess, with a red face, puffy eyes and snotty nose, but I'd held her tight and whispered to her that everything was going to be just fine. I'd told myself that my words had been meant to comfort her, but looking back, I realized that I'd been trying to calm myself down as well. Lord knows that I'd been just as scared as she'd been, and I knew now that holding her, and soothing her, had worked wonders to keep me from giving in to my own urge to cry like a bitty little baby, and I'd kept my promise to her afterward too. I'd never teased her again after that night…well, that is, I hadn't in the mean sort of way that I'd done before.

Those were the memories that took hold of me as Rachel rose unsteadily to her feet, moments after I'd put down the Walker that had been itching to have her for lunch, and all but jumped into my arms. Of course, there were quite a few differences in the girl that I'd comforted then and the woman that I was holding now, but the feeling that I had was still the same. It seemed like second nature to me, to clutch her close in my arms, and I rubbed my hand up and down her back without a second thought, murmuring that everything was going to be just fine, and, just as I had so many years before, I took my own comfort from the feel of her, from holding her, and from being held in return.

I couldn't remember how much time had passed since I'd had a woman wrap her arms around me with nothing held back, pressing herself against me as tightly as she could, but I did know that it had been more time than I liked. Lori hadn't been gone very long, there was still a painfully empty spot where she ought to be, but even before she'd been taken there hadn't been any feelings between us that were particularly lovey-dovey in nature.

"I could always count on you to get me out of trouble," she agreed, sliding her hand into my hair, to twine my curls around her fingertips. "Though, if memory serves, it was more often than not trouble that _you_ had gotten me into in the first place."

It had been a long damned time since I'd been held by a woman, and it felt like I hadn't laughed that whole time either, but I didn't have any trouble working up a chuckle when Rachel accused me of being the one who got her into all of that trouble that I rescued her from. She'd always had the ability to make me laugh, after we'd both gotten older and I'd given my tendencies toward acting like a little shit a rest, and those old feelings came back to me in an instant, as if it had been just yesterday that I'd seen her, as opposed to fifteen years having passed by while she was out of my life.

"Yeah, you're right about that," I told her, squeezing her tight one more time, before I reluctantly pulled away from her. "But you can't blame this mess that we're in on me, because the whole damned thing started while I was pretty much dead to the world in the hospital, so chances are pretty good that I didn't have anything to do with the world going straight to hell, did I?"

I was too busy joking around with Rachel, like it was old times all over again, to pay much attention to what I was saying, or whether or not the words that I was using were appropriate for little ears, but the twin gasps that sounded in the room reminded me that there were children present, kids who, apparently, weren't used to anything that might even remotely be called cussing. Truth be told, I'd gotten used to saying whatever came to mind, no matter who was around, because a few swear words every now and then seemed pretty tame, when you took the state of the world that we were now living in into consideration.

"He needs someone to wash his mouth out with soap, doesn't he, Mama?" one of the little cuties whispered, while the other one continued to stare at me in a way that said that she couldn't quite decide whether I was trustworthy or not.

"Maybe so, young lady, but _you_ need to remember your manners, don't you?" Rachel said, her voice taking on that tone that all mothers seemed to have, the one that must have been hardwired into each and every model. "Rick is an adult, and it is his business to choose what words he will or will not use, and it is not your place to put your two cents into the mix….."

"But Mama, he said the d-word and the h-word and you told me that those were naughty words, and we ought to say dang and heck instead…even though Daddy said that Hell wasn't cussing, it was geography, like saying Atlanta or New Orleans….."

"I hate t' interrupt folks, but we might want t' see about haulin' our collective asses on outta here, before we get overtaken by another group of Walkers, 'less y'all are just in the mood for some shufflin' sumbitch t' make a meal outta ya, that is."

Ah, Daryl. He really had a way with words, the sort of ability that most people lacked, mostly because we had an inner censor in place which stopped us before we said things that were bound to offend people. Daryl didn't care if he hurt your feelings, he didn't give a flaming damn whether what he said was politically correct or not, and most times I applauded him for that…but this wasn't one of those times.

Surprisingly enough, Rachel didn't seem to be offended by what he'd said, or the tone that he'd used while he said it. She turned to her girls, and told them to get their things together, while she slung her own bag onto her back, then picked up the sword that must have belonged to her dad off of the floor and slid it into the scabbard that hung off of her belt. She kept her eyes on Daryl the entire time, and then, once he'd turned around, to make his way back to the door, she walked up beside me and moved close to me, so that she could place her mouth next to my ear.

"I'd say that _he_ was the one who needed his mouth washed out with soap," she whispered softly, her breath warming my ear in a way that made me feel kind of funny, all fluttery like, in the pit of my stomach. "And that's not all that could use a good scrubbing on him, is it?"

Rachel's POV

We were going to have a home again, one that was offered to us by the last person that I would have expected to see, and I couldn't have been happier, or more relieved, to know that someone had finally seen fit to throw a life preserver to me and my girls. Rick Grimes had done his best to make my life hell when I was a little girl, but he'd been like an older brother to me once he'd matured, he'd been one of my best friends…as well as my secret crush from the time that I was eleven until I turned eighteen, when I'd met, and then fell head-over-heels in love with Seth Porter.

I suppose that I ought to have been less than thrilled at the prospect of taking up residence inside a prison of all places, one that was apparently surrounded by scores of Walkers who did their damnedest each and every day to break through the somewhat flimsy chain-link fence that surrounded the place, but surprisingly enough, I wasn't particularly bothered by the notion. After so much time spent on the road, hiding for the night in one random house after another along the way, when we'd been lucky enough to find one, a prison, and some resemblance of order and safety sounded sublime to me, especially since Rick would be in residence…along with a doctor who bore a remarkable resemblance to Santa Claus.

It didn't matter to me that Hershel had dealt primarily with patients who were of the bovine, equine, porcine, canine and feline persuasion in his former life, as far as I was concerned, he was a Godsend, and his presence helped to alleviate some of my primary concerns. Worrying about her children was something that came naturally to a mother, Lord knows that I did my fair share of it and then some, and one of my biggest fears was that they'd be hurt, and I'd be unable to help them. It was a thought that kept me awake at night, that, and the fact that I jumped at every rustle and creak, thinking that the nightmarish beings that had infected our lives were closing in on us, and I hoped that I would finally be able to get a good night's sleep, once we were settled in our new home, because I was exhausted, and I wasn't much use to my children in that condition, was I?

The girls were fascinated with Hershel from the word go, and from what I gathered from their whispered conversations, they truly believed that he was Santa Claus. They couldn't understand why he was so thin, and they couldn't say how he'd lost part of his leg, but as far as they were concerned, he was _the_ jolly guy in red who brought presents on Christmas, if they had tried their best to be good all year long, and they took it as a good sign that he had left the North Pole and taken up residence in the prison that would be their new home.

I smiled as I listened to their conversation, and was amazed, and relieved, to hear that they hadn't lost their ability to believe in something as simple as Santa Claus, in spite of the horrors that they'd seen since the world had fallen apart. They had plenty of reasons to be frightened all of the time, and detached, and jaded, but thankfully they'd managed to retain some small measure of their innocence, and I hoped that this change in our lives might help them to flourish and grow in the way that every child deserved.

The girls seemed to be fascinated by Daryl as well, and they spent a good part of the ride to the prison blatantly staring at him, when they weren't whispering about Hershel's secret identity, and that worried me, to begin with, because he seemed to possess a fairly surly disposition. Thankfully, he was civil to them, not exactly what I would call friendly, but not rude either, and my estimation of him raised by several notches when I saw that he wasn't nearly as hostile as he would have had me believe.

Rick was driving, with Hershel riding shotgun, and it seemed wrong that Daryl had to ride in the hatchback, cramped in with all of our supplies, as well as the goods that they'd just filched, but he had insisted that the girls sit in the backseat with me. The space in the rear was better suited for children, and my daughters' brazen captivation where the man with the crossbow was concerned would have been less conspicuous, had they been sitting behind him, but he was stubborn and refused to budge, and there was no getting around the fact that they were going to make the ride facing the back of the vehicle.

I considered telling them to turn around, but I didn't want to embarrass them and, to tell the truth, Daryl didn't seem to be bothered by their staring faces, and I imagined that he was the sort who wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to stop, if they were doing something that he didn't like, so I let it go. I settled my back against the cushion of my seat, and made up my mind to enjoy the first ride in a car that I'd had in months, while I did my best to keep from copying my girls' behavior by blatantly gawking at Rick.

There wasn't really much for me to stare at, just the back of his head, for the most part, while I remembered moments from our past, but then I became aware of the sensation that _I_ was being watched as well, and I lifted my eyes…and met his in the rearview mirror. I would have preferred to not be blushing at that moment, but I couldn't help but feel self-conscious when I realized that he'd been watching me as I watched him, and then it dawned on me that I had no idea how long he'd been looking into that mirror, and a tiny flicker of awareness made itself known, down low, when I took into account the fact that _he_ might have been watching _me_ first.

What was I doing? I wasn't a kid anymore, and I had no business whatsoever rekindling an infatuation for a man who gave every appearance of someone who was still married. I remembered how he'd been around Lori; I could still recall how he'd looked at her, and the way that he would smile whenever she was around. It was wrong for me to stare at him, to even think about wanting him in that way, and I had no right to assume that he was watching me in the same way that I was watching him.

So why couldn't I look away from him…and why wouldn't he look away from me?

Acknowledgement: The quote about Hell being geography rather than cussing was taken from the movie, _The Wagon Master_, with a little tweaking from me.


End file.
